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Reverend Dexter Clapp of Savannah, Georgia got word of a question put forth in a newspaper, presumably by a Northerner, about the religious condition of slaves in the South. Clapp felt compelled to write a letter to the editor discussing his opinion on the matter. He stated that much of what he had to say was probably not known in the North, but was common knowledge in the South, or at least in his...

In an attempt to legitimatize the institution of slavery, many white slave owners sought justification for their dominating actions within the Bible. They believed they had found it in the Old Testament with the Curse of Ham in Genesis 9:25-27. Cursed be Canaan The lowest of slaves will he be to his brothers...Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem May Canaan be the slave of Shem. These southerners believed...

Baptist educators create the Wake Forest Manual Labor Institute in 1834. In 1838 it is rechartered as Wake Forest College and is moved to its current location. In this time period during the south, the three major evangelical sects , Baptists, Methodists and Presbyterians , founded various colleges; the purpose of these endeavors, as stated by the president of Emory College, was to be the great...

Unlike the Presbyterian or Episcopal Church, the Methodist Church in the 1830s did not require that its clergy be educated. In fact, education was sometimes frowned upon, particularly on the frontier where ministers rode around preaching to small communities. These ministers, called circuit riders, led a particularly dangerous life traveling through undeveloped areas. Because of the lifestyle of circuit...

Reverend J. I. Miller did not follow the regulations of the General Synod of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in North America when he tried to baptize and confirm a group of adults on March 24. He was not authorized to perform the rites of baptism and confirmation without prior approval, which would have been given by Reverend J. B. Haskell. Tellingly Reverend Haskell, the prosecutor in the court case,...

At the McKenzie College on the Texas frontier religion was taken seriously. The Reverend John Witherspoon Pettigrew McKenzie founded the school and was also its headmaster. Malcolm H. Addison attended McKenzie College and like most college students both past and present, he received letters from his parents. For Addison, the subject of these letters inevitably turned to a questioning of the status...

In the early 1820s, the Carter family of Georgia migrated with their aging mother to Piney Woods, Mississippi, a rural backcountry 40 miles from Mobile, Alabama along the Pascagoula River. In letters to family who remained in Georgia religion was frequently mentioned; Evangelical Christianity was central to the Carter family. In 1822, we had regular preaching this year once in three weeks within...

Walker I. Brookes wrote a letter to his father, Iveson Brookes, from his school in Penfield, Georgia in 1839. Walker was most likely a student of the relatively new Baptist institution, Mercer University. In his letter, he told his father of the large number of baptisms that had taken place recently. He reported that 13 boys at Mercer and 24 girls at the Penfield Female Academy, which was organized...

On January 1st, 1830, a bill was placed before the Virginia legislature to incorporate the Trustees of Randolph Macon College'' as reported by the Richmond Enquirer on February 4, 1830. Passed on February 3, the bill established a college at Boydton, Virginia, near the border with North Carolina. Though founded by Virginia Methodists, according to Randolph Macon's website the names of Virginian...

For much of the first half of the nineteenth century, most of the churches in Washington with black members were overseen by white pastors and leaders. As a result, many of the black members felt alienated, while many of the white members were eager to disassociate themselves. Thus, it was a major breakthrough for the black citizens of Washington, D.C., at the Civil War's end, when the white pastors...